“The next chapter in one of the greatest first-person multiplayer shooter franchises the PC has to offer, now with added console support.”―Computer and Video Games

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a first-person shooter video game which is a part of the Counter-Strike series. It was announced to the public on August 12, 2011, and is developed by Valve Corporation and their partner, Hidden Path Entertainment. The game was later released on August 21, 2012 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, and OS X and later Linux as a downloadable title.

Contents

Development

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive started off as an Xbox 360 port of Counter-Strike: Source by Hidden Path Entertainment. Seeing this as an opportunity to expand the franchise, Valve turned it into an entirely new game.[1]

Jess Cliffe confirmed the title "Global Offensive" on the official Steam forums on August 11, 2011,[2] while Valve later confirmed with its official announcement on August 12, 2011[3].

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive uses the latest version of the Source engine and is not built off of Counter-Strike: Source. After the success of the previous game, Valve wanted the newest game in the franchise to cater to both the casual and competitive community by including a matchmaking system as well as support for dedicated servers.

Valve announced the beta would begin in October, but after receiving feedback from professional players who had been invited to playtest earlier versions of the beta, Valve decided to delay the beta [4]. After addressing the majority of the issues the closed beta started on November 30, 2011 to a pool of around 10,000 select players. After almost a year of the closed beta, Valve opened the beta up starting August 14, 2012 to anyone who had pre-ordered the game.

As of yet, the console versions have not been updated and are extremely different when compared to their Steam counterpart. It is currently unknown whether or not Valve has plans for updating these versions.

Patches

Valve is known for providing unparalleled support and continuous updates for its titles, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is no exception. Since the beta ended, Hidden Path Entertainment have stopped its share of the development and Valve has taken over and provided countless updates to the game for everything from bug fixes and gameplay adjustments to new official content, and even added support for the Steam Workshop to allow custom content.

Weapons and Equipment

Weapons

There are 8 new weapons in Global Offensive, and there are several changes to returning weapons, regarding the firepower, rate of fire, accuracy, and movement speed. Weapons in bold are weapons introduced in Global Offensive. Weapons in italics replaced an old gun and its role. They retain the same basic attributes and are officially considered the "successor".

Demolition

Factions

Global Offensive features a total of fourteen unique factions, each with their own quotes and voice acting. All factions have five different possible models, randomly chosen upon spawn. The factions are a mix of old and new characters.

Counter-Terrorists

Achievements

Achievements, also known as Awards in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, are retained from Counter-Strike: Source.

Achievements are given for completing milestones or notable actions, such as getting 1,000 kills with a particular weapon, or getting four headshots in one round. There are five categories of achievements, progression in the completion of achievements in each category will award the player with medals that can be seen on the leaderboard during matches. The list of achievements is found in the stats menu.

Miscellaneous changes

Improved bullet penetration through some walls, materials, and objects when comparing to Counter-Strike: Source.

The radio commands for bots and players have been updated, each faction has its own voice actor, unlike previous Counter-Strike games where all factions had the same voice actor.

Cross-platform multiplayer between Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. PlayStation 3 was previously said to be included, but later dropped.[9]

The console versions of the game run at native 720p resolution at a consistent 30fps.

PC and Xbox 360 versions are rendered in Direct3D, while the Mac OS X and Playstation 3 version is rendered in OpenGL.

The PlayStation 3 version supports the DualShock 3 controller, PlayStation Move or a USB keyboard/mouse, while the Xbox 360 version is limited to a controller.

The HUD, crosshair and buy menu VGUI has been updated.

Added support for ATI X1000-series GPU.

Trivia

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was announced on August 12, 2011, 12 years (exactly 146 months or 4,444 days) after Counter-Strike was originally released as a modification (June 12, 1999).

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive did not arrive on the PAL version of PlayStation Store on the official release date, causing fans of the region to react with anger. Sony apologized for the delay and promised to solve the problem as soon as possible but failed to provide an explanation.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is the only Counter-Strike game to be rated 18+ by PEGI.